My Lockdown Escape: Sparking Self-Empathy in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic

During the Covid-19 pandemic, research communities focused on collecting and understanding people's behaviours and feelings to study and tackle the pandemic indirect effects. Despite its consequences are slowly starting to fade away, such an interest is still alive. In this article, we propose a hybrid, gamified, story-driven data collection approach to spark self-empathy, hence resurfacing people's past feelings. The game is designed to include a physical board, decks of cards, and a digital application. As the player plays through the game, they customize and escape from their lockdown room by completing statements and answering a series of questions that define their story. The decoration of the lockdown room and the storytelling-driven approach are targeted at sparking people's emotions and self-empathy towards their past selves. Ultimately, the proposed approach was proven effective in sparking and collecting feelings, while a few improvements are still necessary

Scaling collaborative policymaking: how to leverage on digital co-creation to engage citizens

n recent years, new methods to engage citizens in deliberative processes of governments and institutions have been studied. Such methodologies have become a necessity to assure the efficacy and sustainability of policies. Several tools and solutions have been proposed while trying to achieve such a goal. The dual problem to citizen engagement is how to provide policymakers with useful and actionable insights and data stemming from those processes. The following paper has the aim to share with the audience of the Data for Policy Conference 2021 an innovative tool based on the concept of participatory policymaking with the scope of collecting feedback and comments to enhance the consistency and the usefulness of the tool. We propose research featuring a method and implementation of a crowdsourcing and co-creation technique that can provide value to both citizens and policymakers engaged in the policy-making process. Thanks to our methodology, policymakers can design challenges for citizens to take part, cooperate and provide their input to policymakers. We also propose a web-based tool that allows citizens to participate and produce content to support the policymaking processes through a gamified interface that focuses on emotional and vision-oriented content

Omecamtiv mecarbil in chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, GALACTIC‐HF: baseline characteristics and comparison with contemporary clinical trials

Aims: The safety and efficacy of the novel selective cardiac myosin activator, omecamtiv mecarbil, in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) is tested in the Global Approach to Lowering Adverse Cardiac outcomes Through Improving Contractility in Heart Failure (GALACTIC‐HF) trial. Here we describe the baseline characteristics of participants in GALACTIC‐HF and how these compare with other contemporary trials. Methods and Results: Adults with established HFrEF, New York Heart Association functional class (NYHA) ≥ II, EF ≤35%, elevated natriuretic peptides and either current hospitalization for HF or history of hospitalization/ emergency department visit for HF within a year were randomized to either placebo or omecamtiv mecarbil (pharmacokinetic‐guided dosing: 25, 37.5 or 50 mg bid). 8256 patients [male (79%), non‐white (22%), mean age 65 years] were enrolled with a mean EF 27%, ischemic etiology in 54%, NYHA II 53% and III/IV 47%, and median NT‐proBNP 1971 pg/mL. HF therapies at baseline were among the most effectively employed in contemporary HF trials. GALACTIC‐HF randomized patients representative of recent HF registries and trials with substantial numbers of patients also having characteristics understudied in previous trials including more from North America (n = 1386), enrolled as inpatients (n = 2084), systolic blood pressure < 100 mmHg (n = 1127), estimated glomerular filtration rate < 30 mL/min/1.73 m2 (n = 528), and treated with sacubitril‐valsartan at baseline (n = 1594). Conclusions: GALACTIC‐HF enrolled a well‐treated, high‐risk population from both inpatient and outpatient settings, which will provide a definitive evaluation of the efficacy and safety of this novel therapy, as well as informing its potential future implementation

L'ambiente strategico del mercato di aerolinea alle soglie della libertà di cabotaggio

As we draw closer and closer to a complete deregulation in this sector, looking back on the complex evolution undergone by air transport and its market may be a useful exercise. The intrinsic danger of its trend toward globalisation is due to the fact that there is still no strict monitoring of fleets that can truly guarantee man’s safety. With reference to the relation between ethics and economics, the companies in charge of running airports and airlines must join forces in order to prevent aircrafts that have not passed the most rigorous test from flying over cities and countries. Sadly, this is not yet the case. Furthermore, national government and transport authorities ought to give top-most priority to the task of monitoring both the secondary market of aircrafts and spare parts and the reliability of operator

habitat fragmentation and infrastructures

ottobr